September 07, 2009

“For a long time this used to be
considered a cultural thing,’’ said Fatima Lalem, who is in charge of
gender equality at Paris City Hall. “Something that happens, but that
people don’t look at too closely.’’ Over the past year, France has
begun to tackle the problem more aggressively. Last November, Paris
City Hall published a guide advising officials on detecting forced
marriages.

But former
victims and activists, many of them second- or third-generation
immigrants working in France’s multicultural suburbs, said such moves
were unlikely to help women married off abroad, or scared into silence.

Zeliha
Alkis, who works for Elele, a nonprofit organization that mainly helps
women of Turkish origin, cites the example of a young woman of Turkish
descent who was married to a Turkish man at a Paris town hall this
summer. On her wedding night, she was locked in a room, and when she
protested, her grandmother tied her up so the marriage could be
consummated.

In many other
cases, the women are married in the family’s country of origin. Reasons
include the family wanting to ensure the woman marries a candidate
deemed suitable, settling a debt, and procuring a visa for the groom.
Unlike arranged marriage, which can be consensual, these weddings are
performed against the women’s will.